Where You Fit
by Miss Meggie
Summary: Jemma has so many questions could Grant have the answers? Spoilers for current and past episodes.


Jemma's day has been rough. Rougher than usual. All she really wants is to do her job and protect her friends but everything is piling up. Feeling slightly out of sync with Fitz after going under, Skye's inhumanness and Fitz's automatic reflex to lie to her about it. Trip's death. That's the one that really sticks but there is nothing she can do to change the circumstances her husband put in motion. Her traitorous, murdering, lying for more years than she cares to remember husband.

There is absolutely nothing she can do to change where Grant has put them all. So she goes to bed. Her pitifully empty bed lacking of her traitor…her person… She spends so much of her energy squashing the part of her that loves Grant that by the time she makes it to bed she is too worn down to hold up the lie any more. In the darkness in her bed where no one can see she lets herself love the lie, the specter that had been their life.

She wonders idly not for the first time if the fact that he'd been so opposed to her joining a field tem was because he wanted to maintain the lie. If he made sure they were on the same team less for Garrett's OP and more for himself.

There's a phone she keeps charged if only because it contains old pictures and sweet good morning texts she can't erase or give up because it's fragments of her happiness even if it was a lie. When it rings she jumps she almost doesn't answer but the idea of the comfort she knows his voice provides is too good to pass up.

"Grant."

"He needs your help." The voice sounds like May but if she focuses she can hear the modulation.

"Agent 33, I do not feel like being manipulated I don't know why I thought even for a brief moment he could do more than that."

There's a rustling and then a half shouted. "I need you Jem! I need my girl no games I swear."

His breathing is off kilter. "Put the phone to your chest."

She can hear stridor. "You need a chest tube but I know you know that already and can walk her through it why did you call me?" She says tersely.

"One of the bullets Skye hit me with is in my chest. That experimental coagulant you made? It works I'm not dead. Bad news? I will be if you don't remove the bullet. I'm showing signs of sepsis."

"I should let you die." She says it tiredly more like pointing out the sky is blue rather than threatening him with his own mortality.

"You won't you're the best person I know. I'm going to stake my life on it."

"That's rash."

She can hear him smile. "It's true all the same."

"Where are you?"

"Lake Champlain."

"You pillock! How dare you."

"How dare I what?" He needles her. He's near death and still poking at her.

"Never mind bloody fucking hell I'm on the way."

"Jem, I never meant to bring another woman to our safe haven." He suddenly says no longer playful.

"Like it matters now. Don't fucking die otherwise it's just a wasted trip."

He laughed. "Love you Jemma."

"Sod off."

-/-

She has to lie her ass off to get the requested leave and make it too their home in the Adirondacks but here she is standing on the top step of the lodge style house made of stone and redwood oak. There are huge windows in almost every room except for her underground lab. Grant liked clean sight lines. She pulls her gun just in case this is an elaborate trap. She hinds the door unlocked. "Grant! Where are you?"

Agent 33 runs up wearing May's face it's unnerving, "This way! He's in your lab."

"Of course bloodying it up no doubt." She muttered trailing behind the other woman.

She walks down and there he is spread out on her lab table pasty and diaphoretic. The red spidery lines spreading out from the wound reddening the skin of his chest in sharp contrast makes her heartbeat heavy in foreboding. She holsters her gun in her pants and drops her things where she stands rushing to the cabinet of medical supplies and treatments she kept just in case something like this ever happened.

Something like her husband being shot by one of his many enemies and refusing to let anyone aside from her treat him.

She never thought she could be the enemy. She draws a dose of the strongest antibiotics known to man into a syringe.

She jams the syringe into his heart. Agent thirty three gasps. "What did you do? "She asked as he has stopped breathing.

"I either bought him more time or made his death arrive more swiftly with less pain. Grant shall tell us which path he chose." She replied taking his pulse that was thread at best but just might level out.

"Damn you to hell Grant! Breathe!" She commanded and as sure as if he heard her he takes a gasping breath. "Thank you." She muttered.

"Uh Agent..."

"I'm Kara."

"Kara …I'm…" She starts.

"His wife and love of his life Jemma Simmons. He talks about you, and all the things he misses when he's drunk."

"Yes well I hope you have a strong stomach because I will need assistance never mind the fact that he knows I'm not this type of doctor. If I am to do this properly and not kill him I will need help." She said all business.

"Anything you need I'll do." She says and the fluttery desperation she hears in the faux May voice is telling of just how deeply this person has grown to care for her husband. The rush of jealousy and possessiveness Jemma feels is disconcerting but she has no time to analyze things as she's taking out tools and blood bags.

Grant chooses then to come around. "Baby you're here…" he says somewhat dreamily Jemma is equating it to the blood poisoning.

"I said I would be didn't I? I always keep my word Grant."

"Are you real? And not some near death hallucination?"

She ignores his mumbled question. "Grant though I have the knowledge I do not have the skill to properly knock you out. I will use chloroform rather archaic I know but I am doing what amounts to field surgery in our house."

"The real Jem, definitely my wife…the Jem in my head uses smaller words in shorter sentences…you look really pretty…I feel floaty…"

"That's the sedative." She states plainly.

"I forgot to water the plants again don't divorce me…" he replies lowly.

"Yes you are very incompasitated if you think that's the problem. "

-/-

Removing the bullet is a very arduous and bloody task. Frequently impeded by having to tell Kara which instrument was needed by direction. "No, to your left three over…no not that the thin one yes that." Or something similar was said often.

It's a heavy thing holding anyone's life in your hands but holding Grant's life in her hands had been like holding a concrete pylon with her finger nails. Any delusions she had of not loving Grant soon fell away. Whatever was in his surprisingly unblackened heart regarding her, she doubtlessly loved him with every completely confused piece of hers.

By the time she was done kicking at the empty blood bags as she covered the wound she far beyond tired.

-/-

She sleeps in the peacock blue chaise next to their bed. She can't sleep in their bed and not just because it feeds that part of her that's desperate to reclaim their past. He's healing he needs space to do. She's afraid to get to close because memories already assault her as he lies deathly still in his sleep.

She remembers painting these walls and having sex on the floor. The very floor he had danced her across the day it was bought. "This is ours, all ours peaceful and untouched." He had said with the oddest look in his eyes like he was clinging to his last hope. Back then she'd mistaken desolation for love. Not ever again she thinks as she drops into sleep.

When she wakes their positions have changed. She's tucked tightly beneath the bed covers and he is watching her with his elbows on his knees hands hanging in the gap of his legs as he leans forward to inspect her eyes speculative.

She sits up quickly.

He is shirtless and scruffy in just jeans and she wants to hate it really she does. She can't. "The scruff suits your face." She says with more anger than she meant too.

"Feisty this mornin' babe." He grins. "I like the hair… the way your bangs keep falling over your eyes."

"You're bleeding. Don't fuck up my work." She mutters gesturing to her patch up job.

He shrugged. "You'll fix me. You've already proven that." He says all smug confidence and wants to slap the truth off his lips.

"You're not funny. Why'd you move me?"

He leaned back in the seat totally at ease. His comfortable slouch was merely an illusion Jemma knew that much. "You looked uncomfortable Baby. Changed it so you weren't."

She suddenly notices her legs are unmistakably bare. "You took my pants off."

"You dislike sleeping in jeans." He points out. The heat of his stare goes up a notch.

"Stop it with the creepy stare and the false niceties! It's already bad enough I betrayed SHIELD to help you being my regular sweet non lying sack of horse excrement husband makes it worse!"

He laughs a completely joyous sound. "Come on baby you can do it just say shit!"

"Seriously Why're you looking at me like that! Stop! I can't tell where one thing begins and the other stops. "There's a new sharp edge to his eyes but he still looks at her like she's the most unique beautiful thing in his life. It's unnerving by turns.

"You know the real me Jemma." He says dryly getting to his feet to stand before her.

"Oh do I? So the real you is a liar and a betrayal ridden murderer."

His jaw woks but he gives no other reaction to the jab. "Yes, fine if that's how you want to frame it. I take full responsibility for my actions even the ones I know you think are totally unforgiveable but you do know me Jem. You do, I gave as much of myself as I could always I promise."

Her eyes narrow. "Was I a mark? Has Kara been your lover the entire time?"

"Do what?" He laughs and it sets her off. She picks up the alarm and chunks it at his head. It narrowly misses. Fury making her accurate. It makes him smile.

That smile bloody mother fucking pisses her off. "I said was our entire life a lie orchestrated by Garrett and just how long have you been fucking her? She shouts.

A truly wounded expression crosses his face. "I have never nor will I ever be willingly and blatantly unfaithful to you. There has only ever been you besides the mark in Morocco which I told you about. To answer your first question, I initially was meant to seduce you to gain Intel for Garrett. By the end of the first month we knew you had none. I however was in love with you half way through the third date. I am still and will always be rather hopelessly in love with you. The person in front of you now the dark, scarred fucked up real man before you loves you so completely he will never be the same. I will never regret it either. I regret hurting you, I regret every lie I ever told because it lead us here. To me calling you begging for scraps just so if I died the last thing I saw was you and it's selfish of me that's who I am I want what I've lost and I want it because it's mine and it's the only thing I ever truly had worth losing."

"Grant…"She started.

"And it led to you lying there looking at me like you can never again know who I am and that's on me. I broke us and I will carry it well past death. The question is Jemma why'd you really come?"

"I think I was testing myself." She confesses too tired to fight him anymore. She flops back on the pillows a moment.

"Did you pass?"

"Failed horribly. I think for the first time in my life." She muttered morosely.

"Jem-"The kindness in his eyes is too much to take. She must flee. Cowardly as it maybe.

She gets up. "Change that bandage. I'm going to fix myself a cup of tea."

He changed the bandage and joined her in the kitchen. As she put the kettle on he took a beer bottle and placed it on the back of her neck and she has a flash of their last Labor Day weekend here. It'd been oppressively hot they'd found interesting ways to keep cool. The ice cube fight had nearly ended in injury, she smiles a bit fondly. "So you love me, I knew that already why are you really here babe. The real answer?" he says in low tone near her ear.

"Don't drink that I have you on Vicodin."

He backed away crossing his arms. In what she called his stubborn stance. "Jem quit stalling and talk. I promise no judgement no hydra tattling just tell me."

"I don't fit. Without you, I don't fit. You fed Skye into the belly of the beast and we all paid. Trip paid with his life and no you aren't forgiven for it. I liked him. Skye is inhuman now as is Raina. Skye has dangerous and uncontrollable powers. I don't want to confine her but as you can attest to the validity of the dangers of alien tech and life forms. I don't believe the inhumans should be taken lightly and if the death of one of them ensures the safety of the greater public then so be it. If it makes me callous or like you then I guess I am. I've changed everything has changed who I am and they don't like it. With you I fit. "She confessed in a rush of pacing quickened words and wild hand gestures.

"Hmm..."

She rails on ignoring his thoughtful hums and ha's. "That's the worst part. I fit with you but I don't know if it's real if we fit because I so desperately want us back or if I fit with you because I'm meant too."

He doesn't say anything just crosses to her and kisses the stuffing out of her. "That wasn't a lie." For some idiotic reason she fully believes him. She steps up onto her toes to kiss him in return. "Where is she?" She asked against his mouth he takes the opportunity when he sees it slipping his tongue into her mouth. He pressed her into the counter as she kissed him back.

"Out." He nipped at her bottom lip. "For hours…" the low rumbling words sound like a threat but it isn't one she's afraid of. His kiss tastes the same and his hands have the same slightly territorial grasp.

It's all the same but he's different his hair is shorter he's sporting a few new scars around his face and the white bandage curling around his chest is a stark reminder of why she's here. Or at least why she thought she was here.

She pushes him away slightly. She strips out her shirt and walks into the sun porch. It's screened by shield tech. they appear to be outside in the sun but they can't be seen by outsiders. She loses the bra.

"Jem Whatcha doin'" He asks like he's curious and fighting a smile.

"You really shouldn't strain yourself. Thought I'd do the heavy lifting. Unless…" She shimmies out of the underwear. "I no longer hold appeal to you." She kicks the scrap of fabric away.

He strolls forward looking at her in that calculative way. Maybe she had played this wrong. Maybe their very active sex life had been his best constructed lie.

He pauses in the doorway. "Why outside or the allusion of it?"

"Because you like having sex outside. Or was that part of the cover too?"

"That…was me. Stop fidgeting, I like looking at you and you're making it difficult."

"Then take off your pants. I'm beginning to feel daft." She snaps and he moves forward.

He swings a leg over the edge of the barker lounger she is standing next to. He sits down. He points to a spot in the floor a step or two closer. He is usually more vocal during sex. "Stand here. Don't move." He commands. But he was always very bossy.

He tugs her just a bit closer looking mightily pleased with himself. As he kissed the hollows of her hip bones her breath caught. "You're getting too skinny again. You gotta remember to eat babe." He sounds so genuine it makes her want to cry.

When he teases her body with his hands deftly moving his calloused fingers in and out in his own rhythm she resolves not to think of how he'd gotten those callouses.

The pressure increases and fades and is never enough. She grinds down on his hand and whines. He anchors and arm around her waist and pulls her down. Somehow he positions her above him with one of her legs thrown over his shoulder.

He leaves her to cling to the top of the chair to hold her weight off of him as he attacks her with his mouth, attack is the only word for it as with his hands and tongue he brings her to the edge and then drags her away,

The stubble on his jaw scrapes at her thighs. His fingers press in firmly and hooks this way and that. It doesn't take long for her to beg and curse. She tries to press down and he holds firm. He bites sharply at her thigh as punishment. "Patience, I know you possess it. Use it."

"Bloody fucking tease! You bit me."

"And you liked it. Shut up you'll come faster." He said before going back to work driving her crazy.

When he finally does let her come her muscles are sore from holding herself up. She is sheened in sweat and mostly hoarse from the noise she'd made.

He gives her a moment to recover but when she slides down to sit in his lap she can feel him hard against her bum.

Even as she's over sensitized she's desperate for the feel of him. Because whatever lies he'd told her here he was the same. Deeply possessive but oddly giving of himself. She loved and she'd missed it.

She undoes his jeans and tears them down before seating herself on him. He makes a hissing noise through his teeth. "Slow Jem, it's been awhile."

"I suppose it has." She says levering herself up of off him to kiss him. It's messy and definitely dirty but there is something about tasting herself on his tongue that feels right.

She sets a slow pace rolling her hips gently. It only lasts a minute or two before he is impatient himself. And he drives himself so far into her it steals her breath and has her coming apart again in seconds but even as her orgasm fades he still thrusting inside her in snappish rhythm "Where's your patience Love?"

"So very far gone I may never find it again…" He sits up changing the angle of things. His mouth is nipping at her breast as he strokes inside her. "It's been months baby. Cut me some slack please." He adds when he catches her smug smile.

She comes a third time clinging to him as he finally gives in his almost tortured groan dies in her hair.

As she is wrapped up in him refusing to move tears fill her eyes. He moves her hair aside and kissed her neck.

"It's okay Jem." He says softly.

"Oh it's okay? It's okay? It's not okay! I love you and I can't, I shouldn't, I'm not allowed to but I do! I love you so much! "She fairly shouts. He looks at her so tenderly it makes her cry harder. "Here like this was the one place you've never lied to me. Here you were mine and I want to keep it I don't want to give that up and not just because I believe no other man can be inside me and not wear your face but really truly, I love that you're mine and I'm yours."

"So don't give it up." he said plainly. "Just run away with me. They think I'm dead, fake your death we could go anywhere at all. We could be nobodies."

Could she do it just leave everything but Grant? She wants too she definitely in this moment wants too. She needs to think and not with Grant still inside her.

"I need to think…I'll go for a walk." She says with a sharp nods and slides from his lap.

She gets dressed and he silently watches her. "Watch for snakes Jem. Stay off Hiller Pass. They have had carjacking issues."

She nods wordlessly.

She walks until she reaches the fork in the trail. One leads back to Grant the other leads into town where she can call the team.

Where does she fit? She thinks she knows. She takes a step.

An: I own nothing. I hope you liked it.


End file.
